Author 




Title 



iLlh... 



Imprint. 



The Man Behind the Mask 



Robert Cecil, first Earl of Salisbury, the True and 
Only Author of the Some Thirty-Seven Plays 
and Poems Now Credited to one Will- 
iam Shakspere, of Stratford-on- 
Avon, England. 



ALSO THE AUTHOR OF A VAST AMOUNT 

OF OTHER WRITINGS GIVEN TO THE 

WORLD UNDER VARIOUS 

LITERARY ALIASES. 



BY 

JOHN M. MAXWELL 

OF INDIANAPOLIS, IND. 



PRINTED BY 

HARRINGTON & FOLGER 

Century Bldg., Indianapolis, Ind: 



.4' 

THE MAN BEHIND THE MASK 

The three-himdred-year search is now ended. The true 
autlior of the some thirty-seven plays and divers poems 
credited to one William Shakespere, of Stratford-on-Avon, 
England, is Robert Cecil, first Earl of Salisbury and Prime 
Minister of Great Britain from 1,^98 to 1012, though he had 
practically been Prime Minister from the time he entered the 
Foreign Office in 1590, this being due to the fact that his 
father, William Cecil, Lord Burghley, Prime Minister for 
forty years under Elizabeth, was seventy years of age and 
l)ractically retired when Robert entered the ofTfice. 

Robert Cecil, born a poet, was designed to be and reared 
by his father as a courtier, to succeed him in ofTice. The 
work was not in its chief aspect agreeable to Robert, but there 
was no future for him those days in becoming openly a play- 
wright and poet. He could not be Prime Minister, could not 
continue in his father's graces, and at the same time be a 
writer of the drama. But that which he could not do openly 
he did secretly, and he wrote a vast volume of matter not 
only under the name of Shakespere, but of John Lylly, Ed- 
nmnd Spenser, Sir Philip Sidney, Davies of Hereford, King 
James 1, Samuel Daniel, and a host of other aliases — all he 
asked was the privilege to hang his efTusions upon somebody's 
name. And so it went on for twenty years and more. 

Cecil was the life-long friend of Southampton, and for 
that reason dedicated his "Venus and Adonis" to him, "the 
first heir of his invention"; later the "Rape of Lucrece" also 
to Southampton. Cecil, Soutb^imp^qq, and Shakespere rep- 



Soutblimptan, a 

^CU'4 28G58 
APR 24 1916 



resenting the theater, divided the money three ways, from the 
plays produced under the name of Shakespere. Shakespere 
of Stratford, an uneducated man, hut with a strong money 
sense, was simply the business manager. The mix-up that 
came betweeij Shakespere and Cecil had a curious origin. 
When Cecil began writing, previous to Shakespere's arrival 
in London, he, if not immediately, very shortly began sign- 
ing his writings "W. S." These, too, w^ere the initials of 
Shakespere of Stratford, but they also were the legitimate 
initials of Cecil, for originally the name of Cecil was spelled 
Syssel, from the Welsh, and there was some objection on 
the part of Burghley's sons, Thomas and Robert, to the change 
in spelling initiated by Burghley. Robert evidently preferred 
the old way of spelling the name. "Will" w^as the famiJy 
name of the Cecil family, and Robert was quickly dubbed 
"Will" — young "Will," as opposed to old "Will," his father. 
}5urghley wanted a son named "Will" and Robert, to please 
him, took the family name and used it as a pseudonym. Thus 
it occurred that when the earlier writings appeared under the 
initials of "W. S." it was only natural that some might have 
identified the initials with the personality of Shakespere the 
actor. What first was purely a coincidence later grew into 
an actual business relationship between Cecil and Shake- 
spere. 

Robert Cecil was deformed from birth, having a curva- 
ture of the spine, and having such an awkward walk that ho 
was called "an apparition of ill." It was for this reason when 
Robert began "nipping" the writings of other writers of the 
(lay, and thus inaugurated the remarkable War of the Poets 
that raged in London for more than a decade, that Robert was 
assailed by jealous contemporaries as Cri-spinas (Cripple- 



spine) and as "The Poet Ape," for the reason that he re- 
sembled a "monkey," an "elph" or "elf," because of his de- 
formed appearance. Elizabeth called him her "elf," a rela- 
tively pleasant term, for she liked her "little man." But his 
enemies were not so temperate and kindly — they called him 
an "ape." 

Contemporary playwrights and poets well knew who it 
was that was writing under the name of Shakespere and 
others. But as Cecil worked under cover, so did those who 
attacked him work under cover. Cecil was Prime Minister 
and he could not be assailed directly by name, for that would 
have been dangerous. Ben Jonson and Marsden went too 
far in their "Eastward Ho!" and were promptly lodged in 
Fleet prison, and only got out by wTiting Cecil that they would 
be good and would not slam at his honesty again. Cecil was 
very touchy on the point of personal honor. He could not 
object to being called an "ape"— ^though it made him wince — 
for he WAS guilty of recklessly cribbing the writings of his 
contemporaries — rewriting and redressing them — "making 
new what was already old," as he described it. But in "East- 
ward Hoi" the authors went too far, as they insinuated that 
Cecil was selling titles to put money in his own and James' 
pockets. 

The sonnets are examples of anagram writing. They are 
trick poems and nothing else. Cecil declares that his name 
is in almost every line of the sonnets and so it is. The son- 
nets constitute the greatest feat in mental gymnastics ever 
performed by man. Cecil's name is also trade-marked over 
all his dramas. 

Cecil and Francis l^acon were first cousins, their mothers 
being sisters. 



